30.8.11

When gods die, they die hard. It's not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you're not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you'd ever want another god to fill their place. You don't want fire to go out inside you twice.

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A few weeks ago Kimberly called asking for book recommendations, specifically books worth buying. I didn't have any. I'd given up. And sunk into even further literary disillusionment when an afternoon at Anderson-Foothill yielded only three books I was remotely interested in---two of which I actually read, only one that I vaguely enjoyed. It was sad. I was sad. Would it be creaky and cranky of me to say that they just don't write Young Adult fiction like they used to?

Still. If I have to cut through the campus bookstore anyhow I might as well walk the YA shelves, you know, just because and maybe. And if I'm going to walk by I should probably look, too, just the top ten shelf and sometimes in the K's if only to make double-double-sure E.L. Konigsburg hasn't written and released anything new since the yesterday I checked. And occasionally, when there's five or fifteen or fifty minutes until my next class, I read. I know. Glutton for punishment.

Until one day, like today, you read. And you read, and you read, and you read. And midway into said reading, reading, reading, you realize two things and then three:

1. You are not leaving the bookstore without this.
2. But it's hardcover.
3. You don't care.

Which is why Gary D. Schmidt's Wednesday Wars is on my mum's bookshelf as I type. You read, you buy, you immediately want to share. Everybody, anybody. This book is Example A to my argument that great YA authors are the only true. The real writers. The sovereign storytellers. Kim, you still got that Barnes&Noble card? Wednesday Wars. Worth buying.

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And, on the last day before the holiday break, to Mai Thi: "Pick it up and be glad you're getting it. You shouldn't even be here, sitting like a queen in a refugee home while American boys are sitting in swamps on Christmas Day. They're the ones who should be here. Not you."

Mai Thi took her Something. She looked down, and kept going.

She probably didn't see that Mrs. Bigio was pulling her hairnet down lower over her face, because she was almost crying.

And probably Mrs. Bigio didn't see that Mai Thi was almost crying, too.

But I did. I saw them. And I wondered how many gods were dying in both of them right then, and whether any of them could be saved.

23.8.11

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song.

16.8.11

I am usually no fan whatsoever of the winter months (wait. coats + scarves. that I can do.), but this is kind of magic. It's been a whole lifetime since the last snowfall in the land of the long white cloud and, seeing as Liv and I were only just researching airfare the other night (whether that's return trip or one way has yet to be determined), this may or may not have made me cry. Tear up a little. Make my heart hurt like sore muscles you never knew you had.

Plus, Cuba Street. I saw a girl with a sparrow on her shoulder there once. I have a picture with David Wenham outside Whitcool's, even though mum laughed when we said we were off star-searching. It's the place I found my fantail tea towel, where Orlando bought his t-shirt for the premier, where--if you walk long enough--you'll find bargain style buys in the basement at spacesuit or lose an hour among the shelves at iko-iko.

New Zealand 2012, anyone? I'm going back. I have to.

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I want to believe that you're at Victoria, that you're studying Journalism like you'd always planned, but you say nothing about anything too serious on the page. I want to think that the "bartender" under your occupation listing is merely the money that's getting you through that flat on Cuba Street, money to buy your beloved Jaffa cakes and money to keep those wide windows open to that sweeping view of city and sea. I want to believe that your stride has finally caught up to those long legs of yours and you are becoming the person you'd hoped for yourself. I want to believe and I want to make sure; I want to spend a calm hour kicking you back into the boy I knew before we can be friends again.

a paragraph from a page I wrote a long time ago | 19b Cuba Street, Wellington, NZ

11.8.11

9.8.11

I read this months back while waiting out a snowstorm in the BYU bookstore, and have thought about it more or less daily since then. Yesterday this showed up on pinterest and I thought about it all over again. Light and love. I think that might be an essay but I am feeling too disjointed to connect all the dots. Alight. Enlightened. Moonlight, candlelight, firelight, flame-bright. Holding a torch and hearts on fire.